Half-way through the Internship…

There was a grin on my face when, half-way through the internship, I tried to recollect things I have learned and the value I created for the company. I became a part of ext.IT from June 16, 2010. First few days were easy as I was getting acclimatized with the company culture and environment. A business developer/consulting intern profile was a perfect match with my interests. Also, the timing was perfect to boot. The company size grew significantly within the last three months, accompanied by a new office space with added resources. This led to new opportunities and challenges for me to apply my business acumen.

Some of the lessons I learned through my internship:

1.     Speak up early and often

2.     Be flexible and learn to adjust yourself

3.     Learn to disagree but commit

4.     Invite different ideas and views

5.     Learn to handle criticism with subtlety

6.     Vouch for your assertion

7.     Be yourself

As important as these explicit lessons are, equally important are the skills of presence of mind, mindful self-awareness, networking and sensitive reading of people and situations.

Internship is paving the way for me to utilize my technical skills and at the same time learn to think from a business perspective. It is teaching me how – in the professional world – all decisions are made depending on the business requirements and resource availability. My first task to research about different cloud computing services (Amazon’s EC2, Microsoft’s Azure and Salesforce and VMware’s VMforce) was a pure bliss. Knowing what different services are available in the market helped me understand its capabilities, differences and its practical applications. This followed by several tasks with increasing work load. Setting and customizing company’s Salesforce account to manage contacts, accounts, expenses and opportunities was a great experience indeed. Along with this, I also got a chance to improve my writing skills and share my knowledge and experience by blogging about it on the company website.

They say, having a good manager is more important than having a good job. I am fortunate enough to have an observant and experienced manager to guide and direct me. I learned much more from him than from anything else. The best thing he is doing to me is reviewing my work early and often which helps me sharpen my skills further.

Through this internship, I am gaining experience in applying my knowledge in the industry, preparing myself for the time when I will join the workforce, in terms of confidence and competence. The most valuable thing I am earning from it is to get to know my strengths and weaknesses and work on improving them. I am sure with days passing by, my learning curve will increase along with the satisfaction of the quality of work.